Under pressure manager Louis van Gaal is at risk of a knockout punch as his side visit Stoke City in the biggest fixture of the Premier League’s busy Saturday epl showdown.
The 64-year-old Dutchman is possibly one or two bad results away from the sack after a run of six winless games that has seen his team drop to fifth place in the Premier League and exit the Champions League.
Amid crucial speculation that he is on the brink of being replaced by Jose Mourinho, Van Gaal stormed out of his pre-game press conference after just five minutes, wishing stunned reporters an ironic “merry Christmas”.
In a subsequent interview with MUTV, he acknowledged that the trip to Stoke was a “must-win game”.
“When you have lost three times in a row, then you need a victory. We have focused ourselves to do that, but it is not easy,” he said.
“Stoke City have won against Manchester City, for example, and it’s a special ground. It is not easy with a lot of circumstances that are not suitable always to playing good football.”
Stoke’s draughty Britannia Stadium is a forbidding place at the best of times and it has proved particularly hostile of late, with Chelsea and Manchester City among the visiting teams to have succumbed to Mark Hughes’s side.
Hughes, a former United striker, expects Van Gaal to turn the situation around, but is unsentimental about the prospect of adding to the Dutchman’s woes.
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